See You In Two Years

09Nov09

Just a short post about the reconstruction of Liszt Ferenc Zeneakadémia (Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music). Today was the closing day of the building, from now on the reconstruction works will take 2 years. The Academy of Music in Budapest will reopen its doors in October 2011.

During the day today people could attend guided tours in the fancy building which will be totally renovated from 10,5 billion HUF, according to the Hungarian public TV’s news, 90% financed by the European Union.

While I was listening to the nine symphonies of Beethoven played after each other from 3 PM today (conducted by Zoltán Kocsis), I was wondering that the Academy really needed the renovation. I tried to take some photos with my mobile, well, not the best photos of the building, but to show some arguments why are we spending money on this very nice piece of Art Nouveau style built in 1907.

On this picture below you can see one of the chandeliers in the concert hall. I don’t know since how long are those nets on the chandeliers but I’ve seen them many times, and it always shocked me, that just in case if a crystal-something wanted to release itself and fall down on the audience, they are putting nets there…

Or this one. This is a famous Hungarian porcelain called Zsolnay on the wall of the Academy (still in the interior). I actually saw in the news on TV that at some corners of the building, this very expensive wall wrapper is fixed with scotch… If had known that earlier today, I surely would have taken a photo of that too, but this one’s showing an intact part of the porcelained wall.

The best recent story happened to this Academy-in-bad-condition in the beginning of October. Our famous organist, Xavér Varnus gave a last concert on this big instrument, but somehow the organ thought that it would be better to make its last concert memorable, and the engine inside of it just burned out. Varnus could give another concert later in October but he was sure it wasn’t by chance that the engine broke down at his last concert on the big organ, so he reported it at the police and according to some news sites, an investigation is going on. But probably the problem was that the organ should have been repaired or replaced before.

Ekint had searched their office after the head of the prime minister's office claimed Hungarian-American businessman George Soros is manipulating the country's politics through organizations funded by him.